Impaired Creativity: Bethesda to Still Use Creation Engine for The Elder Scrolls VI, Starfield

[Raevenlord]

Bethesda Softworks has been betting hard on its Creation Engine to take them through multiple installments in some of the biggest AAA game releases players usually see, in the form of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. And even as the company has announced their intention to explore another new universe in the still mysterious Starfield, it seems the company only knows of one way to do so: their Creation engine. The Creation engine is in itself a heavily upgraded and revised version of Bethesda's own Gamebryo engine, which was deployed in The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind... back in 2002. It has since been heavily upgraded, but it's looking slightly long in the tooth, at least from a visual perspective.





Todd Howard himself told Gamestar that "For Fallout 76 we have changed a lot. The game uses a new renderer, a new lighting system and a new system for the landscape generation. For Starfield even more of it changes. And for The Elder Scrolls 6, out there on the horizon even more. We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best."

That Bethesda is looking to the Creation engine to take them through to the next-generation Starfield game means that the company will again invest in incremental upgrades. Of course, with the cost of developing new game engines being what it is, that's understandable... Up to a point. A time has to come where old patched tools are thrown out the window. But Bethesda definitely knows that moment much better than I do.

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[Easo]

And some bugs still stay the same. I am going to laugh my ass off if some kind of vsync/fps bug will popup again, leaving players unable to open doors or similar stuff.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

And yet more bugs will be added in later. Creation is so old and has had so much added to it, I cant imagine the debugging list. it must be a mile long.

Bethesda has needed to move to a new engine for a LONG time. There were murmurings of it back with fallout 3 and skyrim, by fallout 4 fans were screaming how dated and poorly designed the engine was for modern games. Fallout 76 is showing how far this extends, with the game being client side and its physics engine being tied to framerates, hackers have already found many, many speedhacks to make server life absolutely miserable. And with every incremental update, Bethesda introduces more bugs, more performance sapping complexity, all to make their games look a generation outdated.

I dont understand why they are doing this. They have IdTech 6 FFS! They BOUGHT Id software, they have the engine, yet they continue to use this gamebrio hackjob.

 

[Lightning]

They want development to be fast and cheap instead of slow and good.
Thanks, Todd.

 

[cucker tarlson]

And yet more bugs will be added in later. Creation is so old and has had so much added to it, I cant imagine the debugging list. it must be a mile long.

Bethesda has needed to move to a new engine for a LONG time. There were murmurings of it back with fallout 3 and skyrim, by fallout 4 fans were screaming how dating and poorly designed the engine was for modern games. Fallout 76 is showing how far this extends, with the game being client side and its physics engine being tied to framerates, hackers have already found many, many speedhacks to make server life absolutely miserable. And with every incremental update, Bethesda introduces more bugs, more performance sapping complexity, all to make their games look a generation outdated.

I dont understand why they are doing this. They have IdTech 6 FFS! They BOUGHT Id software, they have the engine, yet they continue to use this gamebrio hackjob.

Doom Eternal is ID7, and it's just jaw dropping

 

[Darksword]

I'll just wait for the modding community to make it look halfway decent visually.

 

[Divide Overflow]

Is this the engine that still has issues with frame rates over 60 FPS?

 

[Dante Uchiha]

I just hope they improve the animation system and the physics...

 

[GreiverBlade]

"It has since been heavily upgraded, but it's looking slightly long in the tooth, at least from a visual perspective. "

well for Skyrim SE their upgrades on the engine ... were insanely.... subpar to what the modder community did ... as a vanilla modded skyrim is league above a SE unmodded ... i haven't migrated from vanilla to SE so far ... (on the physics side ... well it's a little annoying but, my own rig does not handle Skyrim heavily modded in 1620p above 60fps quite well, so no biggies there ... )

I just hope they improve the animation system and the physics...

for animation ... trust the mod community more than Bethesda to do a good/excellent job ... heck even on textures and model also ...

 

[holyprof]

No thanks, only buying their new games when the engine gets better.
I was totally sucked by Morrowind's story and I lived with the game engines's limitations.
Later I played Fallout4, upgraded my PC just to be able to play it better - went from Core2Quad 2.4GHz with 4MB of RAM and GTX960 2GB to i5-4690k 3.5GHz with 16GB RAM + GTX1080 11GB and guess what, I didn't feel big difference, the game is still buggy and video is choppy and ugly.
Damn console ports tied to 60 FPS refresh rate. If you press Alt-tab, the game is almost guaranteed to crash, even on a powerful system - happened to my ancient Athlon 1900+ with Windows XP, then on Core2 with Windows 7 and still happens now on my latest PC with Windows 10 64.

For comparison, Far Cry 5 / Starcraft2 / CSGO / Assetto Corsa / <put any other decent game here> run smoothly and one can easily alt-tab and have another program running in the background and it's still smoother and have better graphics than Fallout 4 / Skyrim.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Todd: Do you guys not have mods?

 

[Frick]

I'll just wait for the modding community to make it look halfway decent visually.

They should totally just release an executable and and editor with 60GB worth of textures and objects and leave the player to design the game themselves. Dialouge between character objects can be procedurally generated by default, or scripted by the player.

Really, the more I think about it the better it sounds.

 

[ArbitraryAffection]

Urgh. This engine needs to die. So help me, if Fallout 5 is on Creation Engine I will implode. Use the engine from Wolfenstein 2 TNC. It's Vastly better in every conceivable way.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I'll just wait for the modding community to make it look halfway decent visually.

You going to be waiting a few years minimum..

 

[Lightning]

well for Skyrim SE their upgrades on the engine ... were insanely.... subpar to what the modder community did ... as a vanilla modded skyrim is league above a SE unmodded

At least they fixed alt-tabbing.

They should totally just release an executable and and editor with 60GB worth of textures and objects and leave the player to design the game themselves.

Hey, this ain't for Linux.

 

[king of swag187]

And some bugs still stay the same. I am going to laugh my ass off if some kind of vsync/fps bug will popup again, leaving players unable to open doors or similar stuff.

If you edited the .ini file to unlock FPS, you could go super fast

 

[Prima.Vera]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

 

[destroyah3034]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

You have to understand that the issues that players have are not just graphics, but the fact that the engine that they use crashes so bloody much. We all want to enjoy a good story and atmosphere, but you can't do that if the engine is constantly fighting you every step of the way. Bethesda needs to take a long hard look at the problems their engines have and rectify them. It should not be a matter of pride that everything is always so buggy with their games.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

AA game maybe not AAA by still using Creation Engine. But I guess it to reduces development time, what a shame.

Guess it will be the modders to develop the EE/remastered version.

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

its you.

 

[moproblems99]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

I am with you. But, Creation engine is so outdated that there is no excuse for it. I don't need a 2020 game with 2010 graphics. I would gladly take a game with with 2017-2018 graphics in 2020 if it had a stellar story/atmosphere/lore.

 

[Assimilator]

Vomit-inducing.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Is this the engine that still has issues with frame rates over 60 FPS?

Yes, mostly. In fact I think mostly it is 59.

 

[INSTG8R]

I play Fallout 4 at 72fps(half of 144) I’ve only had the odd issue with getting stuck in terminals not sure it’s FPS related. But regardless the FPS/Physics thing still exists sadly and was exposed again pretty quickly with the 76 Beta.

 

[hat]

Wow, that sounds like the kind of wacky stuff I would expect out of a PS1... where the game logic, timing etc relies on the framerate. Load up a game into ePSXe, and disable any such limits and see the game totally freak out...

Anyways, hasn't this engine been in service since Oblivion or even earlier? Now, Oblivion was a massive game with lots of possibilities, but that was still, what, 2006? That was 12 years ago!

 

[silentbogo]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

Exactly. That's why I was disappointed by Skyrim and Fallout 4... both are a boring mess with dumbed-down gameplay and lazy story. Outdated graphics and gamebreaking bugs were probably the last thing on my mind after seeing my favourite RPGs become nothing more than an equivalent of GTA in a fantasy/post-apocalyptic world setting.
Oblivion wasn't great either, but at least it got saved by the Shivering Isles.